Canon Is Far, Far Nicer To You Than They Really Need To Be

Reader Kelly writes in to share her positive experience with Canon. She used one of our posts as a guideline before calling in to Canon with an issue with an out-of-warranty printer. Let’s see how it went…

Kelly says:

My mother has a Canon Pixma printer that she bought a year and a half ago, and uses it so much she goes through 4 cartridges a month (2 black, 2 color). She loves it and is dependent upon it for her work. However, the paper feed died a week ago (about 2 months after the warranty ended). She looked up support forums and contacted support, and both she and I did everything we could to try and resolve it. I remembered referencing an article on Consumerist about Canon’s awesome support for cameras (which we used to help us get a point and shoot fixed for no charge), and so looked up Canon printer on Consumerist. I found http://consumerist.com/5384182/canon-replaces-lazy-readers-printer-6-months-out-of-warranty.

I showed my mom the article and the Consumerist site, gave her some tips on talking to the customer service reps (garnered from reading your articles), and voila! The customer rep was patient, helpful, and nice – and is shipping out a replacement printer for free, even though it’s a couple months out of warranty.

Between the camera replacement, the printer replacement, and how much we love our Rebel XT DSLR, Canon has customers for life. I hate my current printer, and I will be buying a new Canon printer in the next month. And I wouldn’t recommend anything else!

So kudos to Consumerist and Canon!

Thanks!!

Oh, we love it when a reader is able to replicate an above and beyond story. Yay!

I still remember how much I hated Canon after my run-ins with an old Multi-pass machine I had. The cartridges for it were very poorly designed. There was a black cartridge, and a color cartridge, and they both sat in a third cartridge with a microchip on it. The color and black cartridges were 10/15 bucks a pop, the microchip cartridge with both was 60. I had a faulty printer that was eating up the microchip cartridges, rendering the printer, and the black and color cartridges, useless every couple weeks. I eventually threw it out the window.

Now I have a Pixma MP (which still stands for Multi-pass, and burns a hole in my head every time I look at my printer), which is the first Canon product I’ve bought since then. I am surprisingly happy with it, and took Canon off my “Will not buy again” list. The only two items left on that list are Sony TVs and Gateway computers.

A happy Canon DSLR user here. I was just mentioning to my boss how quick their customer service is. I’ve called their CSRs a few times this year and i’ve always gotten a quick or informed reply. The time i had questions about a repair I talked to the actual technician working on my camera.

Today when I called their CSR’s were busy so I opted to leave a phone number and they will call back once they are free. 155 minutes later I got a call that i initially missed and they actually called back a second time trying to reach me.

Thanks to the previous Consumerist article about Canon replacing an out-of-warranty camera: [consumerist.com] I was able to have my out-of-warranty S60 fixed for free because it suffered the same manufacturing defect. Then I mentioned it to my sister who’s even older camera had the same symptoms, Canon took it in and fixed it for free too.

I’m in the market for my first dSLR and was hemming and hawing between the different manufacturers, but thanks to this I’d have to say Canon will definitely end up with my money again! Everything’s coming up Milhouse!

Our latest Printer (is 4 years old) is a Canon. works great! Before that, we had both a printer and monitor from HP -both which broke within a couple of months from each other. HP was unhelpful with either and wouldn’t replace the still under warranty monintor because it was still too new and Best Buy refused to do anything about it either. Thus, we won’t buy HP anymore. However, we really, really were happy with Canon. Of course, I still don’t buy cameras from them – am a KM (now Sony Alpha) person ;)

I have a really old Cannon BJC-4200 color inkjet printer for my home. Several years ago, I stored it away and replaced it with a brand new HP inkjet printer. That one lasted about six months. Good thing I saved the Cannon, put it back into service and have had no reason to replace it since.

@humphrmi: Wow, BJC-4200… that was the longest-lasting of all the inkjet printers i’ve had. In fact, I still remember that it took BCI-21 cartridges, which were commonplace enough that Sams Club sold them in bulk.

Same experience here with an HP. Our Cannon (which replaced it) is 4 years old and still going strong. My family buys those cartridges in bulk, so when that one died at like 5 months old, we had lost some money on cartridges and were pretty peeved. You buy a year’s worth because you expect it to just last that long!

When I graduated high school a few years back, I bought myself a Canon Powershot SD450. My dad had a similar model (SD630) and was happy with that, so I got a more affordable equivalent.

A couple years later, I bought a used cell phone that came with some other random things, including an older 2 megapixel camera. I gave that to my great-uncle, who isn’t very good with technology. Problem is, I didn’t have an English instruction manual. Canon sent a replacement manual, not even charging for shipping, and it came in a few days!

Then, a year ago, I got a freelance job with a local weekly newspaper. As nice as my point-and-shoot was, it just wasn’t up for the sports shots I had to take. I was told that I could get a lot more assignments if I had a better camera, otherwise they’d have to let me go. I got a Canon Rebel XS, and couldn’t be happier with it. Unfortunately, the newspaper went out of business a couple weeks later (the editor didn’t expect that, otherwise she wouldn’t have done that to me). Still, Canon has me as a lifelong customer, too. Hopefully they don’t blow it like some companies do!

I love canon. They’ve gone above and beyond every step of the way for me, and I’m a professional using their tools. The only, ONLY problem I have with them is their rebate company. Those guys are scum.

I can personally attest they have gone above and beyond for me before.

I took my digital powershot digital elph s100(the original one) for a trip to Australia, got sand in it by accident at Frasier Island, and it ceased to work when I came back home (Southern Cal).

I didn’t know what was going to happen.

A shot in the dark, I typed a kind letter and sent the camera in a padded box to their repair center in Illinois(I think?). I told them I did not have my original receipt, warranty card, or anything related as it was a Christmas gift.

I had looked up how much a repair would possibly cost and it was and it was well over a 100 dollars, not including s/h.

@gumby101: Unfortunately for me, I did not experience the same level of above-and-beyond service that you did. I expected Canon to repair my less-than-four-month-old SX200 IS after the lens wouldn’t come out. Even though I haven’t dropped it in the sand, I spent one full day of shooting until the battery ran out at the beach (and a only little bit the next day) and next thing you know it wouldn’t work (this was a few weeks later).

I knew there might’ve been sand dust but there should not have been any sand inside the camera, but having read so many positively radiant compliments from Canon users who actually gotten sand into the camera (on top of an expired warranty) I figured that I might be okay since it’s only been just over three months. (I had just missed the 90-day window for Costco returns.)

Anyway, I actually drove about 30 miles out to Irvine, CA to the Express Repair center because I didn’t trust UPS or USPS, who might lose it, break it or damage it in-transit, plus I can get there the same day without having to pay for shipping plus insurance (or, with USPS, tracking) for only the price of gas and about two hours’ of my own time. (Had the day off from work.)

Granted, the lady at the desk clearly pointed out that the camera was still under warranty, and that, barring any water, sand and other stuff, the repair and shipping would be free so I gladly left my camera with them. I get a call the next day telling me that the technicians found sand in the camera and that it would cost over $150 for the cleaning and repair. I pleaded my case saying that it might’ve only been dust particles, but the person who answered the phone said that the report stated they found sand and so I had to pony up the money if I wanted my camera back in working condition, although they would ship it back to me free-of-charge unrepaired. Could’ve have bought a brand-new, lesser-good Canon camera, but I decided to just pay to get my camera back.

Waited over 10 business days, and not knowing what their typical repair volume load was for the season I kept waiting. When I ran out of patience, I logged on to check on the status for one last time before calling them, and they actually shipped it out, over two weeks later. Finally! Turns out they couldn’t get the parts needed, so they replaced my camera with a brand-new SX200 IS unit.

I still like my Canon cameras, but I no longer believe that the awesome customer service is the rule and not the exception. Perhaps next time I’ll get the D10 (or its better, slimmer successor) so there would be no chance for sand dust to get into the camera.

A coworker dropped his Canon camera and broke the LCD. Canon repaired the camera free of charge. This definitely influenced me to buy my two newest cameras from Canon. My next camera will also be a Canon mostly because I like my others so much.

Canon’s also intelligent enough to condone installing the third-party firmware CHDK on many of its cameras, and knows that the software doesn’t hurt the camera. If the camera needs to be returned, Canon asks for the courtesy of returning the camera to its original state, which involves little more than turning it off, putting in a blank SD card, and starting it up again. It really seems to be one of the very few companies that encourages consumers to enjoy its products.

My new scanner is a Canon and I like it a lot. My hp printers haven’t died yet, but the inkjet will and it will be replaced by a Canon. My laser printer was made by Canon in the first place and hp just slapped it’s grubby little label on it.

I like my Pentax DSLR, but when I upgrade in a couple years I will probably buy a Canon. There seems to be a pattern here…does Canon make computers? j/k

Sony is evil and hp makes sh!t. Canon is just taking advantage of its competitors’ short-sighted stupidity.

I had a 3+ year old S60. I beat the living crap out of the poor thing. I am just hard on tech. I recently had the purple screen manufacturer’s defect problem and sent it in. Though it was a known issue, I expected my experience to be like most companies: charge me more than the camera is worth due to the dings on the camera body unrelated to the defect.

Nope! Got the camera back in no time, still my settings, but with a new body and working almost perfectly! It looks brand new! It does not focus correctly on certain images which I haven’t figured out why just yet, but I expect if I have to send it back in, I will be just as happy.

I own 4 canons, and am working on getting an SLR next. Do I need to say who I will buy from?

I had an excellent experience with Canon’s support for my camera. It was really pleasantly surprising. I am in the market for a new digital camera now, and the quality of Canon’s support is definitely going to weigh heavily in my final decision.

I’m part of the mob that has hit up Canon for replacement of older, somewhat defective cameras– in my case, an elderly 2 megapixel Elph that had developed LCD display problems this past summer. Canon promptly replaced it with a refurbished 10 megapixel model. I was over the moon for about a day, until I realized that several of the buttons on the rear of the camera weren’t working right. I called back in a panic, because I was due to go to Norway on vacation in a week (part of why I was so ecstatic was that I was figuring on spending $200 on a new camera, and this saved me from doing that), and the rep was sympathetic but said they needed me to send the camera back to get it swapped out.

I resigned myself to my fate and started shopping for a replacement model to buy for the trip, but just two days later, I had another box from Canon. That’s right– they had swapped mine out, sight unseen, on the good faith that I’d return the broken one. My vacation was saved.

Since then I’ve evangelized constantly about the company and have gotten a Selphy photo printer, which is also awesome. Gifts for family? Canon cameras. When I decide to get a good high-end camcorder? Gotta go Canon. If I succumb to the photo nerd bug and get a DSLR? It can only be Canon. In my experience, if you are nice and patient with them, they will treat you like royalty. I love my camera and printer and am a customer for life.